


From The Way That We Said Goodbye

by QuickSilverFox3



Series: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (2016)
Genre: 3+1, Backstory, Established Relationship, First Meetings, Goodnight is a Romantic, Love at First Sight, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24286402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuickSilverFox3/pseuds/QuickSilverFox3
Summary: Goodnight meets Billy again, and again, and again.-“My heart would feel to be a crime,” Goodnight whispered to himself, tasting the words on his tongue. They felt bitter, a child playing at an emotion he didn’t understand.
Relationships: Goodnight Robicheaux & Billy Rocks, Goodnight Robicheaux/Billy Rocks
Series: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1789006
Comments: 8
Kudos: 27
Collections: Mag7 Summer Swagbag Challenge





	From The Way That We Said Goodbye

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Format prompt: make art for someone else’s fic, or write a fic for someone else’s art. for [this post by oceluna!](https://oceluna.tumblr.com/post/154967376858)  
> 

It was the clothes Goodnight noticed first. In a sea of pale greys and drab browns of linen, the red silk stood out like the moon in a clear dark sky. 

The day was not quite over; time seemingly suspended in the slow, monotonous drag of the afternoon, sun almost suspended in the sky. He was meant to be in class — listen mutely to the facts and figures his parents were paying for — but the warmth of the sun outside called his name like a siren’s song, the splayed branches of the tree beckoning him closer. 

“My heart would feel to be a crime,” Goodnight whispered to himself, tasting the words on his tongue. They felt bitter, a child playing at an emotion he didn’t understand. His accent twisted the words, lengthening the sounds so it sounded wrong compared to the memory of the crisp sounds of Sherrington — conceited smirk on his face and yet Goodnight could never look away, feeling like a nest of vipers had taken root in his chest. 

Goodnight sighed, leaning back against the trunk of the tree, feeling the sun warmed wood beneath his jacket; and then he saw him, scrambling down the tree just for a better look, ignoring the rough wood that scratched at his palms. All caution forgotten, Goodnight walked closer, uncaring of the hateful eyes following him, intent on his downfall. All that mattered was meeting this angel in their midst.

Goodnight stopped at the foot of the stairs, hesitant, his book hanging from loose fingers — poetry disguised as an academic textbook; a gift from his eldest sister and he could now only guess what she had seen when she had looked into his eyes on that day — and took another step closer. 

His feet crunched on the dry leaves tumbling over the steps like raindrops, and the boy’s head — he had to be a boy, but his hair was longer than any boy Goodnight had ever seen — whipped around from his careful study of the wall opposite, eyes locking onto Goodnight. A shiver ran down his spine, a rabbit caught in the gaze of a predator, balancing on the precipice of running and yet Goodnight found himself drawn closer.

The other boy was resting against the wall outside the headteacher’s office, back straight and regal, holding court even though no-one but Goodnight was watching. His hands were hidden in long sleeves of shimmering red silk — embroidered with complex twisting patterns, only visible when the boy moved, and he did move; turning to face Goodnight fully. His hair was tied up, but allowed to spill over one shoulder, a cascade of dark ink; and for a moment Goodnight’s fingers ached to run through it, to twist the boy’s dark hair around his hand to feel it’s smoothness.

“Mr Robicheaux.”

“Sir!”

Whatever spell the boy had cast over him was gone, Goodnight’s stomach twisting with undeserved guilt, as he swiftly pivoted on his heel to grin up at the steadily turning red face of Mr Lawson. A quick glance confirmed that his switch was already resting at the man’s side, tapping against his thigh with minute motions that did nothing to quell Goodnight’s anxiety.

“My office. Now.”

Goodnight released the breath caught in his chest, hands shaking at his sides, pages of his book rustling in the faint breeze. He looked back up at the boy.

He had moved closer by half a step — maybe, some traitorous part of Goodnight’s heart whispered, he was as drawn to Goodnight as Goodnight was to him? — silk bright and beautiful. His eyes were dark and focused, even as his face was carefully blank, and Goodnight fancied he could see a question in this strange boy’s beautiful face.

Goodnight bowed, right hand pressed to his chest — heart slamming against his palm as if it was trying to escape from the confines of his chest — deeper than would be expected of him, and yet he couldn’t consider doing anything else. He rose to a sight greater than the glory of heaven: the boy smiled at him, wide and filled with unconstrained joy. He bowed back to Goodnight, holding the lowered position for a few moments before straightening, hands rising to his face to hide his flushed cheeks.

Then the boy turned and walked away, hands falling from his face and returning to his side, his smile disappearing like a cloud passing in front of the sun. Goodnight watched, heart in his throat until the glimmer of red cloth had imprinted itself onto his eyes.

That night, hands burning from the cane and cradled close to his chest as he slept, Goodnight dreamt of the boy dressed in red silk taking hold of his hand, and smiling at Goodnight again.

⁂

Goodnight’s eyes burned from the dust, tears long since dried up in the face of the oppressive heat. Everything hurt, a deep persistent ache all the way down to his bones, but that was preferably. Physical pain, something he could focus on — aches pulsing like a heartbeat, stabs of pain radiating through muscles he never knew he had, the consistent rasp in his throat — was far preferable over the whispers of long dead men in his ears, of hearing them scream in the night.

When men died on the railroad, they died quietly.

The sun burnt Goodnight’s scorching skin as he trudged back to the hut that had been his lodgings for the past few weeks, head filled with nothing but the thought of falling into his meagre bedroll — carried with him from the army and saved before his mother could burn it, some part of him rebelling her reflexive want to smooth over the jagged edges of him war had produced. 

No-one knew his true name here, and workers passed by like dust on the wind, drifting wherever the company told them to go. Goodnight himself had stumbled into a worker’s camp, ribs still aching from his most recent beating, head still full of amazement that an enemy soldier had saved him, shared his food with Goodnight even though a year earlier Goodnight would have killed him with barely a second thought and met his ghost in his dreams. He went by Sam, like the man who saved him, the first name he had thought of when the heavy boot nudged against his skull, a loud voice demanding he get up and work.

So he worked. He worked until his arms trembled with the strain, and he could collapse into unconsciousness, free from the ghosts that dogged his every step.

A flash of red caught his eye, a poppy growing in a field of corn, and Goodnight turned reflexively, hand flying to a gun he no longer carried. 

Dark eyes met his — familiar and yet not in the same breadth — the gaze pinning him where he stood, a butterfly trapped for this man’s viewing pleasure. The man’s eyes rolled over him in a long languid sweep, Goodnight’s stomach flipping with answering heat. His scarf was a flash of red silk, loosely knotted around his throat, unmarked flesh almost begging for Goodnight’s teeth to bruise. 

With a single easy motion, the man pulled out a cigarette from his pouch, placing it between his teeth, unlit — an invitation if ever Goodnight saw one. It wasn’t uncommon for men to seek the company of other men with the nearest town with available women two days' ride away; Goodnight’s brief moments of rest were filled with hearing barely stifled moans and aborted gasps, allowing his own proclivities to go unquestioned. 

As if Goodnight was a marionette on a string, he took a step closer to the man, reclining back onto a crate, unhurried and unveiled for Goodnight’s eyes only.

The shout ran out like a gunshot, Goodnight recoiling back as if burnt, heartbeat loud in his ears. Guilt stole his breath from his lungs, constricting around his chest like a half forgotten memory, but the spark of rage pushed it down, pushed it away. Goodnight was tired so feeling guilty for his preferences. On his last day in his ancestral home, the preacher came to visit under the guise of paying his respects to the soldier returned from war. He left, purple faced and spitting curses when Goodnight had asked him, in the middle of his well rote speech about the dangers of men falling into bed with other men, if the Lord distinguished between the lives Goodnight had ended during the war, and the murder of a random passerby. 

Goodnight couldn’t return home, and he couldn’t find it within himself to care.

Goodnight drew back reluctantly, as one of the overseers — a huge mountain of a man, red faced and permanently scowling — advanced on the man. 

“Lazy good for nothing! Get back to work!”

His blood was so bright on the dirt, blade appearing in the other man’s hand in between one blink and the next and slicing through the overseer’s neck with barely a whisper. He staggered one step, and then two, before dropping to his knees, breath gurgling in his throat amid a frothy pool of his bright red blood.

Goodnight gazed upon the man, a subjacent in the face of such divine justice. The blade danced in his hands, flashing silver as he holstered it, the handle white as bone. Time slowed to a crawl, a distant ringing in his ears, unable to look away, unable to breath as he waited, caught in limbo.

The man bowed, a spark of memory alighting in Goodnight’s mind, lost before he could recall it, even as he returned the bow reflexively, hand pressed to his heart, muscles screaming at the slight movement. He was gone by time Goodnight looked back up, swallowed up by the crowd that descended, allowing Goodnight to flee.

There were whispers of a professional assassin, rumors of a bounty; when Goodnight saw the familiar dark eyes staring out of a bounty poster, he took it, heart in his throat and chased after the man — unsure of why, but knowing he had to.

⁂

Shouts rolled out onto the street like thunder, the door swinging upon as a man staggered backwards — broken bottle clutched in desperate fingers, nose broken and bleeding — before collapsing to the ground. Goodnight set his heels to his horse, urging her on faster.

He felt like he was balanced on the edge of a precipice, some unknown future stretching out in front of him, and at the centre, one familiar and yet unknown man. 

Goodnight pressed his back to the wood and peered round the edge, assessing this new battlefield as it unfolded before him.

Broken glass littered the floor like fallen snow, brown and green mingling with clear in seemingly random sections — moved and kicked around by the scuffle into almost beautiful patterns. Chairs were broke, but they could have been broken before the fight started—

The man, beautiful in ferocity, smashed one over an assailant’s head, wood splintering on impact with a crash that blotted out all over sounds, his attacker falling to the floor like a felled tree. In the same motion, he flipped over the fallen body, landing nimbly on his feet in time to take another punch to the side, Goodnight’s ripped from his chest by the sound of the impact. The man staggered sideways and retaliated, hand flashing out to hit the man in the throat, his scream trapped in his throat.

“Now then,” Goodnight called, pushing open the door and strolling in, hands shoved deep into his pockets, “I believe I may be able to help here.”

The attackers stared, minds frantically spinning behind their eyes, but the man Goodnight knew — hair tied up in that red scarf, face weather worn but his eyes as dark as ever, lips curled in a grin — only spat to one side, straightening up and leaning back against the broken bar.

Goodnight moved through the broken glass, kicking the stray pieces of broken wood out of the way, confident in appearance even as he screamed inside his mind, palms damp and heart slamming against his chest. He turned his back on the man to speak to the attackers, but he could still feel him there, a bright spot in the fog of his mind, could sense his amusement as the men almost fell over themselves to apologise. Goodnight wasn’t above using his family name, his fabled reputation was admired by men who had never seen the horrors of war — the screams of dying men still reverberated in his ears, the cold touch of death still wrapping around him wherever he raised his gun. 

He didn’t have a plan when he accepted this bounty, driven by some higher power or fate, or the inexplicable pull inside him, Goodnight couldn’t say. 

“Now then, I will be leaving with my bounty. We have a long ride ahead of us,” Goodnight announced, tone leaving no room for argument. The men were swaying on their feet, the drink that had emboldened them to attack a man adorned with as many knives, now clouding their thoughts, dragging them closer towards exhaustion.

“If you wouldn’t mind?” Goodnight asked, turning to look at his bounty, hesitance leaking into his voice. The man was already grinning, one hand pressed to his bleeding nose, dried blood flaking into his beard.

He moved towards the door, pausing to kick a broken chair leg out of the way — denting the opposite wall as the group of men whined, the noise penetrating their skulls — Goodnight moved with him.

The night air was cold, the other man shivering at the first touch of frost in the air. Goodnight carefully placed his own coat around his shoulders, moving almost before he realised what was happening. The blade at his throat was as cold as ice, lingering for only a moment, the faintest of kisses, before it was holstered once more. 

“I apologise, but I don’t seem to know your name,” Goodnight began, the man following next to him like a shadow.

“Call me Billy,” the other answered, and Goodnight fought to keep his movements steady, an explosion of joy ripping through his chest. 

“Billy, I have a proposition for you.”

⁂

Faraday was a drunken idiot, Goodnight decided for what felt like the hundredth time since meeting the man. The room was filled with laughter, radiating out from their table as Faraday and Vasquez howled, blood high from the fight earlier, eyes bright. 

Goodnight glanced to side, eyes meeting Billy’s. The other man’s face softened minutely, the corners of his mouth twitching into a smile, leg pressed against Goodnight’s in silent affection beneath the table. Hiding from their companions was an unfortunate necessity, but maybe when everything was done. If they survived.

“Strange group we found ourselves in,” Billy murmured, leaning closer to Goodnight, goosebumps prickling down Goodnight’s spine.

“Maybe it’s fate,” Goodnight answered, catching the quirk of Billy’s fingers as his eyes passed over Faraday.

“Is it fate you found me?”

“I’ll tell you that later,” Goodnight replied, sitting back up and meeting Sam’s gaze, eyebrow raised in silent question. 

The rest of the night passed, as they often do. Exhaustion drove Billy and Goodnight to their room, loose limbed and satiated, the thrill of opium coiling in their veins, hands coiling together the moment they were alone. 

Billy kissed Goodnight, pulling him closer by his belt the moment the door swung shut behind them, pressing him against the wood. Goodnight tilted his head, eyes sliping closed, beard scratching at his lips as Billy drove all other thoughts from his mind. Until—

“So?” Billy asked, drawing back to carefully consider a spot on Goodnight’s neck, bare above the red silk scarf Billy wrapped around it that morning, before leaning in to nip at the exposed skin. 

“So what?” Goodnight groaned, the small spark of pain fogging his mind. He lightly tugged on Billy’s hair, moving the other man back up so he could kiss him again, hungry and desperate.

“You finding me,” Billy prompted, staring so deep in Goodnight's eyes that, for a moment, Goodnight considered if the other man could see his soul, blackened with guilt but so full of love for him.

“My soul saw you, and it kind of went, ‘Oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

Billy muffled his laughter in Goodnight’s neck, shoulders shaking and knees weak, a warm weight against Goodnight who couldn’t help but laugh as well.

“Come on Billy, take me to bed,” Goodnight urged, carefully pulling the hair pin from Billy’s hair, ducking his head to nip at Billy’s ear. 

Billy straightened up and inclined his head, a silent bow, and did. 

**Author's Note:**

> [ My Tumblr!](https://inkformyblood.tumblr.com) Requests are always welcome!  
> 


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